$100 K. I thought that would get everyone’s attention. And it’s the first thing I say when I meet with young singer/songwriters and their parents as we start the educational process of moving up from the basic performance skills of singing their own songs and playing guitar or piano to the rarefied air of the art of entertaining. That’s what I do these days as a live music performance coach.

Usually, the teenager has spent a few years mastering those skills and his or her parents are dutifully impressed enough to begin to support (and finance) the next steps in their aspiring offspring’s musical career. But I almost always find that once the passable performance plateau is reached, the student assumes (and somehow has convinced the parents) that the next goals are to record and release and album, make a video or two, and then go on tour.

That’s where I step in and save them the $100K (for now) and the time spent doing all of those things too soon. First, we need to discover IF the son or daughter is ready for those things or not. My experience is not.

Let’s start by doing the math behind the $100K figure.

ALBUM: To do things right as far as creating a well-produced album of 12 songs (assuming the songs are ready to be recorded at all): $25K. Yes, you can do it cheaper, but if you’re not going to do it well, why do it at all? Then there is the matter of the sales, marketing, promotion, advertising, publicity, etc. (which can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars). But for the sake of argument, we’ll go low budget here: $25K.

So there’s $50K right there. The track record for professional marketing, promotion, sales and publicity people working a new artist with no fan base and only $25K is spotty at best. So since you have no fan base, the album goes nowhere. Money down a rat hole.

VIDEO: Pretty much the same deal. You can do it cheaply, but why? Do it professionally and correctly or else it’s a total waste of time and money. One relatively inexpensive professional video: $25K. I know because I recently was asked to keep track of budding artist’s video costs for her parents. Since there was no fan base, nothing happened.

TOURING: Given that the young artist has no fan base in his or her hometown, let alone regionally or nationally, the only hope is a buyout as third/fourth/fifth on a bill with some friends headlining. The cost of that buyout, once you include travel and lodging at any level, food, gear, band, crew, whatever – let’s call it another $25K. Don’t think so? Have you budgeted any tours recently at the level we’re talking about here? I have. That’s a fair number to do a four-week tour as a buyout with no income. And at then end of the day, you’re an unfamiliar artist performing your unfamiliar songs to an unfamiliar audience. How do you think that’s going to work out?

So there’s your $100K. Now it must be pretty obvious that there’s no sense in spending all that money when you’re just starting out. What’s the potential ROI? Easy answer: None. Here’s why.

YOU’RE NOT READY. The precursor to making an album and a video and going out on tour isn’t the fact that you have written your own songs and that you have some modicum of experience of singing and playing from a open-mic night stage for your family and friends. The mandatory thing you need to accomplish first is to learn how to not just perform for an audience, but to ENTERTAIN an audience. Just standing center stage behind a stationary mic stand and singing your mid-tempo songs, one at a time, is NOT ENTERTAINING.

If, instead, the artist were to spend the time (and a lot less money) to learn the craft and art of entertaining an audience from a stage on a regular basis, many things would/could/should happen. First of all, gradually the singer/songwriter would learn which songs work and which ones don’t just from audience response. That would make it way easier to decide which songs to record.

Then the subsequent lessons taught and learned about how to enter a stage, how to move around, and how to use visuals and your physical presence to convey emotion in the delivery of your songs will all go a long way toward deciding how to look, act and behave when it comes time to invest in the making of a video of the song that gets the best response.

But mostly, the knowledge and experience of being able to genuinely entertain an audience of complete strangers will prepare you for the proper time when you leave your comfortable hometown crowd and be called upon to do so on a nightly basis for people who couldn’t care less about you or your hometown crowd.

In fact, if you’re successful in the pursuit of knowing how to entertain an audience and draw ever-increasing numbers of ticket buyers to your shows, perhaps the parents won’t have to shell out the $100K after all. There are plenty of record companies, managers, agents, attorneys, promoters, publicists, and all other forms of artist support out there looking for promising successful singer/songwriters. But they aren’t just looking for talent – there’s talent everywhere. They’re looking for ENTERTAINMENT and for artists who have worked hard to attain those goals. Those are the attributes you need to have to attract the attention of the industry.

Oh, did I mention that none of this can be accomplished in a weekend or a month and maybe not even a year? It takes consistent, concentrated effort to achieve all of this. And just as you probably had instruction in learning how to play guitar and piano and to sing properly and write songs, you’re going to need instruction from a live performance coach in order to get up to the next level – that of an ENTERTAINER! Be sure to find a coach who’s going to save you $100K right off the bat. Go to my website – www.diditmusic.com – to learn more.

OK, so, you’ve raised enough money from your friends, family and (let’s hope) fans to record that set of songs in the way you’ve always wanted them to sound and now it’s time to share your creative output with the world. And what better way to do that than through the time-tested path of radio. And, indeed, there is no better way for your music to become one with the masses than through the repeated plays of radio. And it’s free!

No, actually radio is not free. But even if it were, there are numerous steps that you first need to take along the yellow brick road to reach the radio stations of Oz. You’d better sit down.

“When it’s your time, it’s your time.” – Bruno Mars

So what is the best time of the year to release your music on to an unsuspecting public? The following is what I’ve always believed to be the general consensus of a music release schedule/calendar, although I’ve never actually seen it spelled out. I mostly heard it repeated by sales people at weekly marketing meetings during my 20-year stint at Warner Bros. Records, generally used as a reason (or an excuse) as to why this or that record wasn’t selling. You can easily see how you could use these observations to your advantage were you in a similar spot. I’ve taken liberties and expounded on these theorems, although most of them are pretty self-evident, if you buy into any of this rationale to begin with. Of course these seasonal reasons are more psychological than rational. But so is music. And it all starts with the music. But then there’s the problem of when it it the appropriate season?

It All Starts With The Music

Larry Butler is the GM of The Artist Cooperative, an independent music marketing company comprised of experienced former label executives and specializing in national and field staff radio promotion as well as the full spectrum of label services and music marketing.
IT ALL STARTS WITH THE MUSIC is an occasional attempt to make sense of it all - the bigger picture with insight from hindsight and experience. And what better time than now?
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